you should know this

to me – you are just a hallucination
looking at yourself
trying to decide
if you are real

I want every ounce of your phantom
to penetrate my spirit
and break me

but I do not exist

The Other Side Of Love

Darkness is the culprit that lingers behind
each slice of sweet Nectarine.

I am late.
I’ve been here before.

The other side of love.
The place that dissects the tongues
of former lovers
and turns them into layers.

love on
anger on
love on
hate on
jealousy on
love

on poison liquid every night before we stumble to sleep
with the darkness that caresses our feet
and convinces us that we love ourselves
to much to live on the other side.

I am late.
I’ve been here before
where I could feed you Mercury
while the sun sets on us forever.

I’d caress your feet and pray to the darkness
to take you far away
from my love.

Copper Loaded Love

A green barrette, a gun.
Good-bye, my lady.

If I cut my hands off, my lucky gun would fit.

I gave three seconds and died
happy, life is just a lesson.
You are thirty seconds to the grave,
I am just a prison.

You’re Irish season swallows poison,
we terrified your liver. Good-
bye, my lady,
I am drowning in a river.

Everybody is looking,
I have your money here.
You cheat! You’re a cheat, painting courage over
with fear.

My white girl, I love you,
with a dark and heavy gun.
I shot you up, a million shots
with copper loaded love.

Drink your dark poison,
swallow your tainted love.
Good-bye. my lovely lady,
your green barrette, your gun.

spiders inside me

*WARNING* THIS COULD BE A TRIGGER FOR VICTIMS OF SEXUAL ABUSE/ASSAULT

 

In the morning he crawls across me
pasting me with his skin

his limp tongue travels around the clock

tick….tock

I watch the fan spin my blood to a thick boil
fists tied white
chest tight
open wide…..

spiders crawl in
feeding ammunition
his slow words lock the air
his hard wear
my pulled hair

I’m twisted around this prison
caged in a dark rhythm
until the deep alarm
the heartbeat

his slimy little army marches through deep flesh
he smiles
trying to disarm me

and I watch the fan spin around and around
and wait for the
spiders to crawl out.

Let Me Pray

I am small;
a pink stick
still blossom
smothered in gasoline.

A sunset is coming with trumpets.
I drink terror under the table;
a jungle of Heaven.
I pout when the symphony
plays out,
the cherry violin stampede
chases my breath
away.
I am accused,

though I feel clean.
My hand’s in the cookie jar
with a pistol.
I must be sick.
My head is sneezing,
my insides fevering,

heading south.

I hear my mother pray for a safe way.
Let me pass. Let me raise the
icebergs to the sun and melt
with them.

The great horns blow
into my throat,
deep musical breaths
pump my chest,
but I last it out.

I am a small, crushed blossom
under the foot of guilt
and shame.
Strike a match.
Let me blend with the end of the day.
With my hand on the trigger,
In my own way,
let me pray.

The Drums Began

and then they left their home,
one by one, the salty fluid pouring
into each other, God called
down to Margaret that morning;

“I know spaces between stones,
that, years ago, repressed me.
A harp was broken by an angel,
and now you shall go empty.”

Drums beat wild; a spell of evils
cast up from Hell’s almighty.
Can I exist, just as this?
A nightmare in a body?

I was given a black trail,
a tricycle, and blindly
left my post beneath the drums
to find captivity.

I listened from a noisy Inn
near the Mighty Mississippi,
its waters shook all voice
and took it selfishly.

So, I went, to a purple mountain,
to visit Mighty Oak Trees,
but my tears tried to drown
me there, drip, drip, dripping.

Heaven became worth it when
I had realized it hardly,
every stone and every man
awaited hardening,

I sat in line, in silence
with them, picking at my knees,
when fire grabbed a child’s limb
and she screamed in agony.

I found that I was not an
Angel, the devil had been dwelling
in wine and liquor and
my heart had, all this time, been failing.

Canker Sore

I think of my skeleton as a
canker, burning hollow in
a deep, deep cave.

My son cries about my skeleton and
I tell him,
“hush now! It is just bones. 
It is just white, not blood or bed.”
And it is not.

I have a long, thin canker and
I have a man with knitting hands.
He wraps me in warm stitches;
in strong pursuit.
He points me with pressed thumbs
just enough that
I pound with his heartbeat.

I am a canker and he is a mouth hosting
an ulcer. He cleans,
cauterizes me with searing tips and
I cry about my skeleton and he says,
“hush now, it is just bones.”
But, it is not.

Blackbird Song

I have let callous hands
unzip my heavy breath,
free me of metal,
cold restraint.

I have talked to wind
chimes short of frost,
of shine, and let
windy hands slap falling
leaves off
their easy limbs.

I have laid in blue bed
skies, covering mortality
with surging white mass;
pillows for eager
eyeballs. I popped each blue ball,
socket clean of collagen,
of cell, blackbirds emerging,
fleeting,
feeding on my sight.

What they must have seen!
What images must be coursing through
silk ebony feathers!
It is, surely, enough to take
a blackbirds
sight,
enough to pluck wispy wings
from a torrid
feathered friend.

The Bugs

Oh! The bugs are marching
one-by-one
in
my head, my head

my head
it’s latched on by
commitment

Thank God! Else it
would have shaken off
with rickety waves of
apprehension
I am standing on

thousands of microscopic
bug legs
strutting,
fashionably strutting
in hand crafted
black leather wedges

chewing up
the poise that carries me
through rocky terrain
mixing
creating
cement bricks of
disquietude

trampling my resplendent
garden
of backbones.